On the first Sunday afternoon of 2015, Elon Musk took to the stage at a closed-door conference at a Puerto Rican resort to discuss an intelligence explosion. This slightly scary theoretical term refers to an uncontrolled hyper-leap in the cognitive ability of AI that Musk and physicist Stephen Hawking worry could one day spell doom for the human race.
That someone of Musk’s considerable public stature was addressing an AI ethics conference—long the domain of obscure academics—was remarkable. But the conference, with the optimistic title “The Future of AI: Opportunities and Challenges,” was an unprecedented meeting of the minds that brought academics like Oxford AI ethicist Nick Bostrom together with industry bigwigs like Skype founder Jaan Tallinn and Google AI expert Shane Legg.
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Sunday, January 18, 2015
Thursday, October 23, 2014
‘Let’s create the OS of life’
Thinking at the OS level
Johnson believes we are at one of the most exciting moments in history. “At no other time has the distance between imagination and creation been so narrow,” he notes on Medium. “We now have the power to build the kind of world we could previously only dream of. With new tools such as 3D printing, genomics, machine intelligence, software, synthetic biology and others, we can now make in days, weeks or months things that previous innovators couldn’t possibly create in a lifetime.”
Johnson suggests we need a new metaphor to effect real change for humanity at a global scale: “We need to “think and operate on a fundamental level: the operating system … In the same way that computers have operating systems at their core — dictating the way a computer works and serving as a foundation upon which all applications are built — everything in life has an operating system (OS). It is at the OS level that we most frequently experience a quantum leap in progress.”
He believes OS-level thinking can “redefine medical discovery and cure aging; recreate the biological toolset of our existence; become a multi-planetary species; reinvent global transportation infrastructure; enhance our minds; safely create advanced machine intelligence; and produce abundant clean energy. …
“If you are working on a quantum-leap discovery that promises to rewrite the operating systems of life, we hope to hear from you.”
Source
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Our First Glimpse of the Web that Connects All Galaxies
Astronomers say all of the galaxies in the universe are connected by a vast cosmic web of filaments, but we've never actually seen this supposed network. That's changed, however, thanks to the tumultuous activity of a distant quasar that's illuminating the celestial backdrop.
We already know about these filaments, at least conceptually, because computer simulations tell us they're there. As the universe cooled after the Big Bang, most of its matter (including and especially dark matter) congealed into a network of filaments that spanned the cosmos. Certain points of this web contained more mass than others, eventually resulting in the formation of stars, galaxies, and galactic clusters. So even though the Big Bang happened long ago and its galaxies are now far apart, virtually everything's still connected within this web of vestigial matter.
Source
We already know about these filaments, at least conceptually, because computer simulations tell us they're there. As the universe cooled after the Big Bang, most of its matter (including and especially dark matter) congealed into a network of filaments that spanned the cosmos. Certain points of this web contained more mass than others, eventually resulting in the formation of stars, galaxies, and galactic clusters. So even though the Big Bang happened long ago and its galaxies are now far apart, virtually everything's still connected within this web of vestigial matter.
Source
Friday, March 15, 2013
Physics: Explained!
If you’re daunted by the Higgs Boson, don’t be. To understand it, you only need to learn the entire history of physics in thirty minutes. Here goes...
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Why our food is making us fat
The story begins in 1971. Richard Nixon was facing re-election. The Vietnam war was threatening his popularity at home, but just as big an issue with voters was the soaring cost of food. If Nixon was to survive, he needed food prices to go down, and that required getting a very powerful lobby on board – the farmers. Nixon appointed Earl Butz, an academic from the farming heartland of Indiana, to broker a compromise. Butz, an agriculture expert, had a radical plan that would transform the food we eat, and in doing so, the shape of the human race.
Butz pushed farmers into a new, industrial scale of production, and into farming one crop in particular: corn. US cattle were fattened by the immense increases in corn production. Burgers became bigger. Fries, fried in corn oil, became fattier. Corn became the engine for the massive surge in the quantities of cheaper food being supplied to American supermarkets: everything from cereals, to biscuits and flour found new uses for corn. As a result of Butz's free-market reforms, American farmers, almost overnight, went from parochial small-holders to multimillionaire businessmen with a global market. One Indiana farmer believes that America could have won the cold war by simply starving the Russians of corn. But instead they chose to make money.
By the mid-70s, there was a surplus of corn. Butz flew to Japan to look into a scientific innovation that would change everything: the mass development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), or glucose-fructose syrup as it's often referred to in the UK, a highly sweet, gloppy syrup, produced from surplus corn, that was also incredibly cheap. HFCS had been discovered in the 50s, but it was only in the 70s that a process had been found to harness it for mass production. HFCS was soon pumped into every conceivable food: pizzas, coleslaw, meat. It provided that "just baked" sheen on bread and cakes, made everything sweeter, and extended shelf life from days to years. A silent revolution of the amount of sugar that was going into our bodies was taking place. In Britain, the food on our plates became pure science – each processed milligram tweaked and sweetened for maximum palatability. And the general public were clueless that these changes were taking place.
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Butz pushed farmers into a new, industrial scale of production, and into farming one crop in particular: corn. US cattle were fattened by the immense increases in corn production. Burgers became bigger. Fries, fried in corn oil, became fattier. Corn became the engine for the massive surge in the quantities of cheaper food being supplied to American supermarkets: everything from cereals, to biscuits and flour found new uses for corn. As a result of Butz's free-market reforms, American farmers, almost overnight, went from parochial small-holders to multimillionaire businessmen with a global market. One Indiana farmer believes that America could have won the cold war by simply starving the Russians of corn. But instead they chose to make money.
By the mid-70s, there was a surplus of corn. Butz flew to Japan to look into a scientific innovation that would change everything: the mass development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), or glucose-fructose syrup as it's often referred to in the UK, a highly sweet, gloppy syrup, produced from surplus corn, that was also incredibly cheap. HFCS had been discovered in the 50s, but it was only in the 70s that a process had been found to harness it for mass production. HFCS was soon pumped into every conceivable food: pizzas, coleslaw, meat. It provided that "just baked" sheen on bread and cakes, made everything sweeter, and extended shelf life from days to years. A silent revolution of the amount of sugar that was going into our bodies was taking place. In Britain, the food on our plates became pure science – each processed milligram tweaked and sweetened for maximum palatability. And the general public were clueless that these changes were taking place.
Read more
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Climate change evident across Europe, says report
The effects of climate change are already evident in Europe and the situation is set to get worse, the European Environment Agency has warned.
In a report, the agency says the past decade in Europe has been the warmest on record.
It adds that the cost of damage caused by extreme weather events is rising, and the continent is set to become more vulnerable in the future.
The findings have been published ahead of next week's UN climate conference.
They join a UN Environment Programme report also released on Wednesday showing dangerous growth in the "emissions gap" - the difference between current carbon emission levels and those needed to avert climate change.
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In a report, the agency says the past decade in Europe has been the warmest on record.
It adds that the cost of damage caused by extreme weather events is rising, and the continent is set to become more vulnerable in the future.
The findings have been published ahead of next week's UN climate conference.
They join a UN Environment Programme report also released on Wednesday showing dangerous growth in the "emissions gap" - the difference between current carbon emission levels and those needed to avert climate change.
Read more
Friday, December 02, 2011
UK Strike Could Turn the Tide of a Generation
It was the wrong time to call a strike. Industrial action would inflict "huge damage" on the economy. It would make no difference. Public sector workers wouldn't turn out and public opinion would be against them. Downing Street was said to be "privately delighted" the unions had "fallen into their trap".
The campaign against today's day of action has been ramped up for weeks, and in recent days has verged on the hysterical. The Mail claimed the street cleaners and care workers striking to defend their pensions were holding the country to "ransom", led by "monsters", while Rupert Murdoch's Sun called them "reckless" and "selfish".
Michael Gove and David Cameron reached for the spirit of the 1980s, the education secretary damning strike leaders as "hardliners itching for a fight", and the prime minister condemning the walkouts as the "height of irresponsibility", while also insisting on the day they had been a "damp squib".
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The campaign against today's day of action has been ramped up for weeks, and in recent days has verged on the hysterical. The Mail claimed the street cleaners and care workers striking to defend their pensions were holding the country to "ransom", led by "monsters", while Rupert Murdoch's Sun called them "reckless" and "selfish".
Michael Gove and David Cameron reached for the spirit of the 1980s, the education secretary damning strike leaders as "hardliners itching for a fight", and the prime minister condemning the walkouts as the "height of irresponsibility", while also insisting on the day they had been a "damp squib".
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Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Greece has a right to face austerity on its own terms
Aside from blaming politicians and bankers, Greeks are angry at Germany for making them a scapegoat for a larger crisis
For days now, Greeks have been indoors glued to their television sets, following the political "thriller" (as the channels like to call it) unfolding on the cliff edge of the country's threatened ejection from the eurozone. In case Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy hadn't put it plainly enough when they called George Papandreou on the carpet in Cannes, EU commissioner, Olli Rehn, issued his ultimatum on Sunday: Greece had 24 hours to form a unity government or be plucked like a festering thorn from Europe's side. As the tortuous negotiations between the leaders of the two main parties wore on, yet another deadline appeared: the moment when the markets would open in Tokyo. The unity government was duly announced, but the wrangling continues: it still has neither a leader nor a cabinet.
Read full piece
For days now, Greeks have been indoors glued to their television sets, following the political "thriller" (as the channels like to call it) unfolding on the cliff edge of the country's threatened ejection from the eurozone. In case Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy hadn't put it plainly enough when they called George Papandreou on the carpet in Cannes, EU commissioner, Olli Rehn, issued his ultimatum on Sunday: Greece had 24 hours to form a unity government or be plucked like a festering thorn from Europe's side. As the tortuous negotiations between the leaders of the two main parties wore on, yet another deadline appeared: the moment when the markets would open in Tokyo. The unity government was duly announced, but the wrangling continues: it still has neither a leader nor a cabinet.
Read full piece
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Newspapers to disappear by 2040: UN agency chief
Newspapers will disappear and be replaced by digital versions by 2040, the UN intellectual property agency’s chief said in an interview published on Monday.
Francis Gurry, who heads the World Intellectual Property Organisation told the daily La Tribune de Geneve that “in a few years, there will no longer be printed newspapers as we know it today.”
“It’s an evolution. There’s no good or bad about it. There are studies showing that they will disappear by 2040. In the United States, it will end in 2017,” he said.
Gurry noted that in the United States there are already more digital copies sold than paper copies of newspapers. In cities, there are also fewer bookshops.
Source
Francis Gurry, who heads the World Intellectual Property Organisation told the daily La Tribune de Geneve that “in a few years, there will no longer be printed newspapers as we know it today.”
“It’s an evolution. There’s no good or bad about it. There are studies showing that they will disappear by 2040. In the United States, it will end in 2017,” he said.
Gurry noted that in the United States there are already more digital copies sold than paper copies of newspapers. In cities, there are also fewer bookshops.
Source
Study seeks to prove theory humans still evolving
OTTAWA — Rare evidence of the long-held belief that humans are still evolving has been unearthed in the parish records of a French-Canadian island on the Saint Lawrence seaway, researchers say.
Ile aux Coudres is located 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Quebec City. Between 1720 and 1773, 30 families settled there and the population reached 1,585 people by the 1950s.
Poring over church registers containing detailed records of dates of births, marriages and deaths, researchers found the age of women when they had their first child fell from about 26 to 22 years over 140 years from 1799 to just before 1940.
After discounting environmental and social factors, they concluded this substantial change from one generation to the next “largely occurred at the genetic level.”
“It is often claimed that modern humans have stopped evolving because cultural and technological advancements have annihilated natural selection,” says the study led by Emmanuel Milot at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
“Our study supports the idea that humans are still evolving,” it concludes. “It also demonstrates that micro-evolution is detectable over just a few generations in humans.”
Full piece
Hacking Crisis Edges Closer to British PM Cameron
David Cameron will be forced to explain damaging new revelations today that have dragged him deeper into the phone-hacking scandal.
It emerged last night that Neil Wallis, the former News of the World deputy editor who was arrested last week, worked for the Conservative Party before last year's election. He gave "informal" advice to Andy Coulson, his former boss at the NOTW, who resigned from the paper over the hacking affair but was later appointed Mr Cameron's director of communications.
In a second blow to the Prime Minister, it was revealed that his chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, had appealed to Scotland Yard not to mention hacking during a Downing Street briefing last September, four months before Mr Coulson quit his No 10 post. Labour said the disclosure showed Mr Cameron could not do his job properly because of the cloud cast by the hacking controversy.
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It emerged last night that Neil Wallis, the former News of the World deputy editor who was arrested last week, worked for the Conservative Party before last year's election. He gave "informal" advice to Andy Coulson, his former boss at the NOTW, who resigned from the paper over the hacking affair but was later appointed Mr Cameron's director of communications.
In a second blow to the Prime Minister, it was revealed that his chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, had appealed to Scotland Yard not to mention hacking during a Downing Street briefing last September, four months before Mr Coulson quit his No 10 post. Labour said the disclosure showed Mr Cameron could not do his job properly because of the cloud cast by the hacking controversy.
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Tavis Smiley on Morning Joe: Bush lied us into Iraq
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Separating fact from fiction on U.S. economic myths
With the recent Iowa straw poll and President Obama’s bus tour, Americans are hearing a cacophony of arguments about the wobbly economy. The federal stimulus package passed in 2009 was either a deficit-busting failure full of wasteful projects or an unparalleled rescue that would have been more successful if it had only been bigger. Taxes are either stifling or the lowest they’ve ever been. America needs to invest in infrastructure, or “infrastructure” is merely a euphemism for more government spending. So, here’s our guide to the most prevalent economic myths.
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Thursday, August 18, 2011
Tax the super-rich or riots will rage in 2012
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — What a year. Rage in London, Egypt, Athens, Damascus. All real. Just a metaphor in the new “Planet of the Apes” film? No, much more. Warning: More rage is dead ahead. Across our planet a new generation is filled with rage. High unemployment. Raging inflation. Dreams lost. Hope gone. While the super -rich get richer and richer.
Listen to that hissing: The fuse is rapidly burning, warning us. Wake up before the rage explodes in your face. This firestorm is endangering America’s future. From forces outside, yes. But far more deadly, from deep within our collective psyche. We have lost our moral compass. We are self-destructing.
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Listen to that hissing: The fuse is rapidly burning, warning us. Wake up before the rage explodes in your face. This firestorm is endangering America’s future. From forces outside, yes. But far more deadly, from deep within our collective psyche. We have lost our moral compass. We are self-destructing.
Read more
Republicans will not be re-elected in 2012
There has been various circumstantial evidence that the public’s dissatisfaction with the performance of Congress, particularly during the debt ceiling debate, could threaten the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Disapproval ratings for the Congress are at record highs, as are disapproval ratings for the Republican Party. Other polls show record numbers of Americans saying that their representative should not be re-elected, that most members of Congress should not be re-elected, or both.
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Friday, August 05, 2011
Why Twitter is obsolete
Twitter boasts 200 million users and 350 billion tweets per day, and it's a ubiquitous reference on mainstream TV. Visit Twitter today, and it's a hive of frenetic activity. Millions of people rely on the service for news, commentary, blog updates and social interaction. Twitter is about to close an $800 million funding round, which values the company at about $8 billion.
Suddenly, however, the service has been rendered obsolete by Google's new Google+ service, and also by the company's failure to capitalize on its five-year window of opportunity to innovate its way to indispensability.
It's only a matter of time before Twitter becomes a ghost town. Here's why.
Read on
Suddenly, however, the service has been rendered obsolete by Google's new Google+ service, and also by the company's failure to capitalize on its five-year window of opportunity to innovate its way to indispensability.
It's only a matter of time before Twitter becomes a ghost town. Here's why.
Read on
Monday, June 27, 2011
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Project Icarus: Demonstration of Fusion Pulse Propulsion
Project Icarus is a theoretical design study of an interstellar starship. This movie illustrates how a Fusion Pulse Propulsion system works, which was the engine used for the 1970s Project Daedalus. Fusion releases, on average, about a million times from energy than traditional chemical rockets, and so would be perfectly suited for interstellar propulsion. To learn more, visit http://www.icarusinterstellar.org
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
From Grunting To Gabbing: Why Humans Can Talk
Most of us do it every day without even thinking about it, yet talking is a uniquely human ability. Not only do humans have evolved brains that process and produce language and syntax, but we also can make a range of sounds and tones that we use to form hundreds of thousands of words.
To make these sounds — and talk — humans use the same basic apparatus that chimps have: lungs, throat, voice box, tongue and lips. But we're the ones singing opera and talking on the phone. That is because over thousands of years, humans have evolved a longer throat and smaller mouth better suited for shaping sound.
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To make these sounds — and talk — humans use the same basic apparatus that chimps have: lungs, throat, voice box, tongue and lips. But we're the ones singing opera and talking on the phone. That is because over thousands of years, humans have evolved a longer throat and smaller mouth better suited for shaping sound.
Read more
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